The present invention uses a portion of an orthogonal spreading code space in a CDMA spectrum for uplink signaling from a user element to a base station. By assigning the user elements one or more signaling codes, which are orthogonal to those used to spread data, to use for uplink signaling, the present invention significantly reduces interference between signaling channels, and between the data channels and the signaling channels, while supporting additional capacity. The signaling codes may be individually assigned to user elements or assigned to groups of user elements. Further, different length signaling codes may be assigned to the user elements to support different signaling rates depending on Quality of Service (QoS) requirements.